Getting RC Ideas Out Widely,
While Also Building the RC Community
From a talk by Tim Jackins at the September 2019 Teachers’ and Leaders’ Workshop for Fryslân and the Netherlands VVV
Question: The world is clearly eager for our knowledge. What ideas do you have for getting RC to people faster than we are already doing?
Tim Jackins: I don't think there are any shortcuts. And, I think we are trying to do two things. One is to get out to everyone the basic ideas. ("Life goes better if you listen to each other.") The other is to build the RC Community in depth.
GETTING RC IDEAS OUT WIDELY
We are getting RC ideas out more and more in our wide world efforts, such as United to End Racism and Sustaining All Life. In New York (USA) this week [in September 2019], at least thirty-five different RC activities are taking place, and there are leaflets for each one. We have gone to enough climate events that people know us and look for us. Other groups are starting to advise their people to go to our activities because just knowing a few basic things makes their work go better. And that’s great.
One of the best things about United to End Racism and Sustaining All Life is their effect on the Co-Counselors who participate. They come back different because they’ve been required to go out and meet people and talk straight to them about RC. And they’ve seen people interested in knowing about it. (The population they’ve been reaching for has already decided to change the world and is happy to get our tools to help them do it.)
BUILDING THE RC COMMUNITY
Building an RC Community in depth turns out to be [in practice is] much more work than giving people a taste of RC. Many of you have been building Communities long enough to get discouraged about it. That happens to almost everyone. And this weekend you are getting a picture of why it’s so hard: early on we were all badly hurt and isolated from each other.
Every new person we invite into a fundamentals class got badly hurt as a child. We haven’t always recognized that. We have offered them a chance to work on many things. We have wanted them to try Co-Counseling. But we haven’t always let them know that they have big struggles to face.
Hundreds of thousands of people have come into RC, very enthusiastic. They have had some good sessions and seen things change. Then often they have hit a heavy piece of distress and gotten discouraged, and if they haven’t had a strong relationship, they haven’t been able to stay; it’s been too hard.
I think 150,000 to 200,000 people are in RC, and maybe a million and a half to two million people have left. Almost all the people who have left are in orbit around us, hoping that we do well. They are thinking we are right and hoping we are successful. We have a big supportive system out there watching us. And every so often one of them comes back and looks to see if there’s enough support that they dare try again.
We haven’t been able to consistently offer enough support for many people. We, or their other counselors, get scared when their heavy distress comes up. Then they leave, and we wonder what happened. We’re not good at chasing after people who turn away from us. It still restimulates our feelings of rejection. I think if we work on our early distresses, we won’t be so timid. We’ll have a little more confidence in what’s possible.
A BIGGER GOAL FROM THE BEGINNING
I think it would be useful for each Community to have eight or ten introductory talks and then offer eight or ten fundamentals classes. Each of the talks and the classes could be aimed at a particular issue, to fit the groups we have around us. For example, one could be on women’s liberation, another on young people’s liberation, another on the liberation of men, another on ending racism, and so on. I think it’s possible to look at RC through a particular window and learn everything from that perspective. And if we do this, I think we’ll attract people differently than we have so far. From the beginning, we’ll be providing not just a personal goal but also a bigger one.
Between these specialized approaches and getting better at directly challenging people’s isolation and feelings of defeat, I think we might be able to be more effective. We’ll see.
(Present Time 198, January 2020)